


Nightswimming

by etherati



Category: Watchmen
Genre: Bittersweet, Established Relationship, M/M, Non-Graphic Sex, One Shot, Porn With Plot, Pre-Roche, gn!verse, wow pretentious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-31
Updated: 2010-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-06 21:49:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etherati/pseuds/etherati
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The photograph reflects, every streetlight a reminder: these things, they go away – replaced by everyday."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightswimming

**Author's Note:**

> Nostalgia(n): From the ancient greek 'algos', pain, 'nostos', a return home. Pain of the past and of homes and times you cannot return to. IE: There be angst here to go with the sexins. Kinkmeme fill, AGAIN. Prompt was for skinnydipping and beach sex which I of course had to twist around into something ultimately depressing and vaguely surreal because even making them young and sticking them in an established relationship, I can't just let them be happy.

*

_[He’s been to this lake a hundred times, as a child, as an adult, in the awkward and gangly years in between – and there are never errant eyes watching and the bottom is never muddy or covered in sharp rocks and when the moon rises just right the water looks like black tar lit on fire and-]_

Dan stands on the bluff overlooking the water, overdressed for all his memories of this place in slacks and sweater – but it’s getting on into autumn, 1979 drawing gracefully towards its close, and the fragile heat of midday is breaking earlier and earlier as the weeks go on. The rental car sits fifty feet back, on the road beyond the gate, and beyond that: miles and miles of asphalt and a small town whose name he can’t pronounce no matter how many times he visits.

There’s wind, and the far-off scutter of leaves across paving, and he feels exposed alone on the rise, because it’s a brightly lit night and he’s standing against it in a kind of shameless defiance that he’s only ever felt here once before. He drops to crouch amongst the tall grass that comes nearly to his chin, rolling on the balls of his feet and feeling the sharp corners of something in his pocket biting into his leg.

The breeze has broken the still mirror of the water, sending ripples to lap against the bare roots of the single old tree that still manages to keep its grip in sodden earth. Further out there are fallen branches and driftwood, rising above the surface with a gnarled grace-

_[The twist of an ankle or the dip behind a knee, glimpsed for a second through the murky blackness like a slithering wisp of pale white smoke – there and gone, slipping through his vision like a ghost]_

–and it’s just as well that the mirror’s shattered because there _are_ ghosts here, lit around the edges in the same fire that ribbons through the water, and he doesn’t want to see what the brutal honesty of the lake’s surface would have to say about that. Doesn’t want to see the reflections they aren’t casting, the ripples they aren’t making, the footprints they aren’t leaving through the wet sand; wants to just watch them for a moment, now in the water, now on the beach, now pressed against the roots of the silhouetted tree, all shine and motion and a backwards kind of innocence, with phantom hands that have no trouble gripping and clawing at smoke – their bodies cast by moonlight into a shape he won’t remember in the morning.

*

It’s 1968, and Midsummer’s only just passed, and it’s a long holiday weekend, and that’s the only way he’s managed to convince Walter that the city can survive without them for a few nights – he has numbers, crime statistics that bear his words out, and they both badly need a break, edges worn thin and fraying, starting to turn their frustration inward towards themselves and each other. A trembling buck moon hangs heavy and low over the water, picking out the well-worn footpath from the gate to the beach with startling bareness. Everything about this space is open and raw and scrapes at something primitive and vulnerable, and it is one of the few places Dan has long memories of that has not ever changed.

"We’re breaking the law, Daniel," a quiet voice comes from behind him, trailing down after him through the grass.

He glances back over his shoulder. "Hm?"

"There was a sign, back there. Said no trespassing."

"Oh," Dan whispers, and there’s laughter in it, breathless and sparse. "That’s just Mahoney, the guy who owns the land. He’s never come stalking around with a shotgun, if that’s what you’re worried about."

A thoughtful sound, and when the path widens, Walter falls into easy step beside him, matching footfalls instinctively, for once making more noise than Dan in his hard-bottomed shoes. Dan left his shoes in the car, his socks and belt and wallet, and his bare feet split the grass silently. Walter hasn’t even so much as unbuttoned his suitcoat. "You’re not as confident as you’re pretending to be," he says, voice pitched low. "Or you wouldn’t be whispering."

"Oh, come on," and Dan is well aware of how juvenile this sounds, but he doesn’t really care. "It’s no fun if you’re not worried about getting caught."

They’ve come to the edge of the water, and it’s as dark and endless as he remembers. He huffs a nervous laugh, and he can feel the expression on his face – knows how childishly excited and terrified he looks, as he grabs at the tails of his shirt and peels it away, lets it fall away from his fingers to the sand like an offering.

Walter’s still unmoving, eyes catching the moonlight and lost, somewhere out there in the black. Dan watches him silently for a long moment.

"I’m not-," Walter starts, haltingly – then turns his face back towards Dan, and Dan could swear he’s captured some of that roiling darkness, bottled it up behind the blue. "Not a strong swimmer, Daniel."

Dan curls his toes into the wet silt, the coolness strange and welcome after years on pavement and asphalt. His hands go to his slacks, unfasten and unzip them, let them fall away, and it’s all he’d been wearing. Wades in with a beckoning hand. "…you know I’d never let you go under."

Silence, for a long moment. Dan’s in to his waist when he finally turns back to look.

Walter just nods, the motion stilted – strips the layers away methodically, down to his shorts, and follows.

*

The water feels more slippery than it should – softer, like oiled silk, without all of the chemicals and additives and processing the city’s water goes through before ever reaching their walls, sputtering out of showerheads, tracing hot and sterilizing over skin and tile. It makes it hard to keep a grip on things, and on people. He’s laughing, wet hair stuck to his forehead, trying to get his hands on Walter for long enough to hook his fingers under the band of his boxers and divest him of them, but for such a self-proclaimed poor swimmer, he writhes like a _fish_.

"Don’t," Walter splutters, catching a mouthful of water in his struggles. "Can’t let anyone-"

"There’s no one _here_, you crazy bastard," Dan retorts, grinning as he finally catches fabric between his fingers and tugs sharply; the movement yanks Walter backwards and down, sinking him under the water with a surprised yelp. When he surfaces – Dan’s arm around his back, pulling him back to the air and flush up against his chest in one motion – his face is all startled indignation, but it melts off into something fuzzily indistinct under the sheen of water when Dan nuzzles in along his throat. "…and I want to feel you."

Walter shudders against him, hands moving under the surface to slick over the planes of his chest and shoulders, touch softened by the water between them, like fish tickling over ankles; up to Dan's throat, wet skin over wet skin in the still air. Dan catches his eyes for just a split-second; divines his intent from the sharp intensity there, and then there are legs hitching up around his waist, the grip on his throat shifting to his shoulders, and Walter is so close to weightless in the water when he hauls himself up to kiss Dan hard from above, deep and looming and devouring.

"…Just don’t lose them," comes the voice growled into his mouth, and Dan laughs, one hand shifting to run fingernails up along Walter’s spine as the other lifts up out of the water, balled fabric heavy and dripping, and throws it hard in the general direction of the shore. It falls short; catches on the branch of a fallen log jutting out into the water, hangs there.

Silence for a long moment, and then Walter huffs out a short breath that is the closest he ever comes to laughter. "…will be dry later, at least."

Dan rolls his hips, grinning, and the moonlight is threading fingers through the water and their hair and over their faces and then hands are everywhere and he’s not sure whose are whose anymore –

_(grip slipping and connecting and sliding away, whispery flashes of sensation through the black, black water, broad expanses of flesh laid bare and vulnerable to run fingers across and then lose in the shadows and shallows –)_

–and Walter may thrust and moan against his stomach, and Dan may bury his face in the crook of Walter’s shoulder and lave his tongue over the tight skin and sharp corners of bone, but it is all the same, fleeting contact – there and gone again, almost languid in its impermanence, and for once, there is no urgency to any of it.

*

The tree’s bark would be scratching Walter’s back, leaving deep, jagged scrapes and tears, if the constant proximity to the water hadn’t softened it into something like peatmoss, rubbing off in loose crumbles. They’re getting into his hair, and Dan would bet there’s wet sand working into places it shouldn’t be, but he can’t bring himself to care, digging his knees in deeper and working his hands through all the ginger that looks, in this warm yellow moonlight, like liquid swirls of copper. Every inch of skin he’s touching – with fingers, with his mouth, with the insides of his thighs, trembling lightly where they brace around Walter’s hips – is wet and warm and alive in a way that does not come through cloth and leather; does not ever surface in the city, even when they’re sweaty and exhausted and breathing each other’s air and tangled inextricably in each other’s space.

_[“Can’t do this here,” he’d said, scandalized; mostly hidden by the water’s reflective mirror was one thing, but out here in the open air _ _–_

_“You know what?” Dan had replied, clambering onto the nearest rise of the bluff, standing up against the sky, unselfconscious in his nudity in the way that young children often are; too innocent to care about vulnerability, about shame. “I don’t care. I don’t care who sees.”]_

There’s nothing holding it down here, no oppressive anxiety or the grind of adrenaline-poisoned patrols or the perversion of broken-up trysts in alleyways and brothels and sex clubs to render this into something dark and twisted; just skin on skin and a feeling rising up Dan’s throat like a swimmer breaking into sky, gasping breaths, laughing and giddy and shaken and so grateful for the simple gift of air and life and the stars that go on and on-

_[“This is us, this is – this moment, right now, this is ours. Just ours. And I don't care.”]_

They only have the soft clinging water, and saliva, and their own beading slickness, but he’s so relaxed that it’s enough, and the look on Walter’s face when Dan settles down around him, pressing to his hips and grinding down, is the closest thing to actual wonder that he’s ever seen on those harsh, stone-hewn features. He takes a moment – just a stretch of seconds – to memorize the expression, carry it with him: the way the moonlight’s glinting in eyes that have never seemed so dark, the way thin lips seem fuller when they fall open in just that way, still wet from the lake –

Then he’s leaning in, covering Walter’s mouth with his own, groaning something deep and inarticulate into it as he rocks against him. He’ll never get over this feeling; the searing intimacy of taking him inside like this, of trusting, of feeling Walter’s heat as if it were his own, shifting and pulling and tugging something out of him by careful, delicate degrees.

_(Hands, slipping and moving, white fish under the water and if you can’t catch them by the tail you’ll never have a chance _–_)_

Time seems to stretch; there’s just mouth and skin and hands and hair and sand under his knees and Walter inside him, and the clinging wetness cooling them in the night air, and he couldn’t really say how long they’ve been here, moving together like this, and then: there’s something there, out of the corner of his eye. It looks like the shadow a crouched figure would cast, spilled over the nearest grassy bluff, but there’s no one there.

No one…

He’s close, he’s closer than he’d even realized, but there’s something bleeding off of that almost-shadow, wrapping around the brightness rising in his gut like a black ribbon, constricting, pulling down and it feels like time and fire and ash and it tastes like regret, somewhere on the back of his tongue.

He’s panting hard against Walter’s ear, and Walter is ducking his head to the side, turning away like he always does, embarrassed for Dan in his vulnerability and not wanting to burden him with a witness to it.

No one…

It’s an impulse and it’s coming from that place inside where the darkness is coiling, and he grabs Walter’s face in his hands, lifts it back up to face his, because it’s suddenly so important that he sees this, at least once –

_(Because regret **is** time and fire and ash, and it’s a terrible thing to carry, and you’re not going to if you can help it _–_)_

_(And neither will he.)_

And when he finally breaks apart, undone by sand and water and the sky through the tree’s branches and the moonlight’s touch, by Walter’s hands and skin and heat buried inside, he hangs on just long enough to see those eyes widen in surprise and awe – and that’s enough. He can feel the darkness shaking out of him with every shudder and twitch and aftershock, coming loose, carried away.

It’s only a few bleary seconds later that Walter follows him, eyes pressing shut against the sounds he won’t let himself make, jaw clenched until the muscles bunch and knot, and Dan makes sure to watch that, too.

Because this, this right here – is theirs.

*

Somewhere nearby, there’s a photograph floating in a sudden breeze, sharp corners creased from riding in a pocket for too long, and it both exists and does not exist – cannot settle, and so the wind takes it, like it takes the sound of feet through tall grass and the splash of water on quiet nights and the gasping breath of spent lovers,

_(And of course they never call themselves that, never say the word, but the moon outlines their wet bodies in gold and traces the path of their choices in the sand and tells no lies-)_

and somewhere a gate creaks and a chain rattles as it’s set back into place, and it’s autumn, 1979, and any footprints pressed into the hard-packed sand have long since washed away.

*


End file.
